Charts of the week: Contraception, federal investment in research & development, and global poverty

THE HIGH COST OF BIRTH CONTROL DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTS POOR AND MINORITY WOMEN

Eleanor Krause, Isabel Sawhill, and Katherine Guyot, from the Center on Children and Families, find that in the United States almost half of all pregnancies are unplanned. This rate has declined for all women, but much less so for poor and minority women due to the high price of contraceptives.

FEDERAL R&D SPENDING HAS DECLINED FOR NEARLY 50 YEARS

According to Scott Andes and Daniel Correa, federal investment in research and development, which makes up over half of the total spending on basic research in the United States, has been declining since the 1960s. Declining spending on research and development leads to slower economic growth. President Trump’s proposed budget, which has not been approved by Congress, would decrease R&D spending by 17 percent.

THE RATE OF GLOBAL POVERTY REDUCTION IS APPROXIMATELY 72 PEOPLE PER MINUTE

With updated information from the IMF and in-country surveys added to the World Poverty Clock, Homi Kharas and Wolfgang Fengler analyze the progress made to hitting the world’s Sustainable Development Goals. They find that an estimated 1.2 people per second, or 72 people per minute, escape extreme poverty. But this rate is not enough to eliminate poverty by 2030, the first of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Poverty is still rising in 30 countries including Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s most populous nations.